Microwave-mediated magneto-optical trap for polar moleculesProject supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China

Realizing a molecular magneto-optical trap has been a dream for cold molecular physicists for a long time. However, due to the complex energy levels and the small effective Lande g-factor of the excited states, the traditional magneto-optical trap (MOT) scheme does not work very well for polar molec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChinese physics B Vol. 25; no. 5
Main Authors Xie, Dizhou, Bu, Wenhao, Yan, Bo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IOP Publishing 05.04.2016
Subjects
cold molecules
laser cooling
microwave-mediated magneto-optical trap (MOT)
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Summary:Realizing a molecular magneto-optical trap has been a dream for cold molecular physicists for a long time. However, due to the complex energy levels and the small effective Lande g-factor of the excited states, the traditional magneto-optical trap (MOT) scheme does not work very well for polar molecules. One way to overcome this problem is the switching MOT, which requires very fast switching of both the magnetic field and the laser polarizations. Switching laser polarizations is relatively easy, but fast switching of the magnetic field is experimentally challenging. Here we propose an alternative approach, the microwave-mediated MOT, which requires a slight change of the current experimental setup to solve the problem. We calculate the MOT force and compare it with the traditional MOT and the switching MOT scheme. The results show that we can operate a good MOT with this simple setup.
ISSN:1674-1056
DOI:10.1088/1674-1056/25/5/053701